BURTONSVILLE, Md.  Ryan Lerch's arms ache and his left leg shakes as he cautiously steps from the aging van.

A training coordinator coaches a student in the art of backing up a UPS truck.

By Tim Dillon, USA TODAY

"You forgot to grab the hand rail!" barks UPS training manager Matt Webb. Lerch is already sheepish. Attempting to negotiate a slalom course, he turned too wide, then forgot to beep the horn every three seconds while reversing — one of a litany of safety precautions the world's largest package delivery service requires of its 85,000 drivers.

"It's a lot easier riding a horse," says Lerch, perspiring after uneasily maneuvering a cavernous vehicle with a balky clutch and no power steering on a UPS driver confidence course. Lerch's last job was wrangling horses in Colorado. Now, the lanky 26-year-old is among 12 hopefuls trying to lasso work as a UPS "service provider."

The collective nervousness is palpable. Trainees know that wearing UPS brown is a fast ticket to a top-dollar blue-collar job. Crumbling corporate profits and tight labor markets might be eroding job security and benefits for millions. But for those at the wheel of the ubiquitous UPS delivery van, the good times continue to roll.

Thirty months into the job, the company's U.S. drivers earn top union scale wages — up to $70,000 or more a year. Senior drivers get up to nine weeks paid annual leave. While most workers' medical insurance premium costs are rising, UPS picks up 100% of drivers' premiums. Pensions are also generous; drivers retiring after 25 years get up to $30,000 a year.

High pay and deep-pocket perks are largely why UPS drivers average 16.2 years on the job, four times longer than the typical American worker. They're mostly why turnover is 1.8% a year. And they're why UPS ranks are swelling with white-collar workers embarking on new careers and an increasingly educated workforce. More than 5,100 UPS drivers are college graduates or hold advanced degrees.

Trainees must first survive a nerve-wracking month of instruction and field training, including a six-day Service Provider Training School, the first step to steep them in UPS culture and rigid methodology. They have to master the DIAD (delivery information acquisition device), the high-tech electronic clipboards tracking 13.6 million UPS daily deliveries. And there's a battery of road tests, supervisory evaluations and written exams.

About UPS

Headquarters: AtlantaCEO: Michael EskewEmployees: 360,0002002 revenue: $31.3 billion2002 net income: $3.2 billionCoverage: Delivers 13 million packages and documents per business day in the USA and more than 200 countries and territoriesFleet: 88,000 vehicles and more than 575 jet aircraft

Source: Hoovers

Trainees get four tries to navigate the confidence course in a van — "package car" in UPS parlance. The course is designed to represent a slice of the cluttered roads, tight alleys and hazards drivers encounter in urban areas. "If you don't get it by then, there's not much hope," Webb says.

There's also a succession of formal supervisory reviews. Webb is encouraging of Lerch's shaky initial performance. But the washout rate among trainees in Webb's training district in suburban Washington can run 30%.

With a college degree in outdoor recreation, Lerch has a fallback. But he'd prefer to join UPS' 74,000 U.S. drivers. "This might be a permanent career move," he says.

Blair Garcia-Bullinger, who will earn his psychology degree from the University of Maryland next spring, feels the same way.

Polite, clean cut and smartly dressed in his company-issued cotton/polyester blend uniform, Garcia-Bullinger seems like a model for a recruiting poster — if UPS needed one.

UPS drivers have become hunky icons of another sort, their status forged a decade ago in a front-page Wall Street Journal story headlined "In the UPS Man, Some Women Find a Complete Package ... Oh, Those Brown Duds."

With his wife, Kelli, expecting their first child in February, Garcia-Bullinger couldn't care less about babe-magnet potential. He thought about extending his military career after five years as a musician in the Navy's Atlantic Fleet band. But at 24, he sees more security and opportunity at the nation's fourth-largest private employer. "The Navy doesn't have much need for bassoonists," he says.

As do most trainees, Garcia-Bullinger already works as a part-time package sorter. About 220,000 of UPS' 360,000 employees are Teamsters, and their six-year labor contract ensures they get first crack at the choice driving jobs.

UPS also likes to promote managers from the rank-and-file. Most, including CEO Mike Eskew and his predecessors, have spent entire careers at UPS. Begun in 1907 as a local Seattle delivery, UPS now serves more than 200 countries. With 2002 revenue of almost $31.3 billion, it ranked 43rd among publicly held Fortune 500 companies. Only Wal-Mart, General Motors and McDonald's employ more workers.

"UPS is unusual among large companies for providing long careers and promoting from within, even senior managers," says Don Cohen, co-author of the management book In Good Company. "If you can make the grade, you are likely to have a job for life."

He turns on to the center lane of a three-lane highway, noisily grinds through low gears, forgets turn signals and is admonished to slow down. Despite the gaffes, instructor Bill Gilchrist is quick to praise. "You did a lot of good things out there," Gilchrist says.

About half the trainees are in their 30s and 40s, embarking on second careers, including Donna Heflin, who faced a layoff after eight years as a computer technician at information technology provider Electronic Data Systems.

Heflin's triple-pierced ears are earring-less — UPS safety rules allow one pair of studs. "I'll just go bare," she says. "It's a small price to pay for a job like this." About 6% of UPS drivers are women.

At 46, Charles Newcomb is the oldest trainee. He was managing a West Virginia restaurant before moving to Maryland, where he bunked with family. He's banking on a steady income at UPS to supplement his artwork, which he says has been compared to that of surrealist Salvador Dali. "UPS is someplace I could be working at for the next 20 years," he says.

Newcomb could stick far longer; UPS has no mandatory retirement age. Marty Peters, now in his 57th year, works full time. He's held a variety of UPS jobs and is among 3,372 drivers feted by the Atlanta-based company for 25 years of accident-free driving. Hard of hearing but otherwise fit, Peters now toils as a shifter — moving large tractor-trailers called feeders at a Detroit warehouse.

"Quit? I'm not ready to retire," says Peters, 81.

Changing gears

Few trainees who make the cut are likely to have Peters' gumption and staying power.

"Drivers make good money, but these are hard, stressful jobs," says Teamsters union executive Ken Hall, lead negotiator on the past two labor contracts with UPS. "They can get in and out of their truck 100 times a day. They're lifting (heavy) packages. It's hard on the back and the knees."

By Tim Dillion, USA TODAY

UPS' Ron Atkinson explains to new drivers the use of side mirrors and points out a blind spot.

Long, grueling hours — and more overtime hours than many want to work — are behind a lawsuit by union members seeking class-action status on behalf of UPS' 5,000 California drivers. The lawsuit contends UPS has violated state laws covering overtime pay and has failed to provide work breaks required by state law.

UPS spokesman Dan McMackin says the company has a strong record on providing a good working environment and is looking forward to presenting its management practices in court.

The Burtonsville trainees just want to get their foot in the door, or on the pedal. Most would be happy at a shot of having the tenure of Stan Styger and Steve Wingate, among scores who were headed for other careers or white-collar jobs.

Styger joined UPS 26 years ago, unable to find full-time work as a pharmacist after graduating from the University of Montana. "To tell you the truth, my family wondered why I was doing this after getting a pharmacology degree," he says. "But in terms of pay and benefits, it's comparable to being a pharmacist, and you have a future."

Wingate, 51, who has been driving the same Fort Collins, Colo., route the past 12 years, spent several years as a veterinarian in rural Minnesota. "I cleared over $100,000 in the last year of my partnership, but it was a lot of hours and a lot of stress," he says. "People would call me in the middle of the night. Sometimes, I took animals home with me."

Styger has served the 1,800 residents of Ronan, Mont., for 16 years, covering 150 miles each day. Like many UPS drivers who've long made the same rounds, he's forged strong relationships, developing friendships, sharing family stories and getting invitations to weddings, graduations and office parties. Those connections, Cohen says, are part of the jobs' allure.

Motorized cavalry

In the highly mechanized culture at UPS, drivers are front-line, motorized cavalry fighting multiple fronts: road hazards, inclement weather, the clock and competitors. To UPS, the key to a successful career starts with safe driving indoctrination.

The trainees' confidence course offers a small taste of hassles urban drivers such as Bob Screen face every day: wayward motorists and pedestrians, theft, road hazards and construction sites.

Accidents and delays can topple the tight, orchestrated delivery schedule Screen maintains on his Washington route near the White House. When Screen finds convenient parking, he usually keeps it and makes most of his office building routes on foot. It's not unusual to accrue up to $400 in weekly parking tickets. (UPS picks up parking fees — including more than $1 million a year for its New York City drivers.)

With programs such as money-back guarantees on next-day ground shipment orders, "it's gotten more competitive and more demanding — it used to be just us and the Postal Service," he says. "Now, it's FedEx and everyone else. So we have to provide more and stay on top of things. Customers can always go with someone else."

To maximize efficiency and safety, UPS has developed 340 methods for drivers to follow, ranging from mandates on how to carry the ignition key to package distribution. UPS drivers log more than 2 billion miles a year, so a core part of the methodology focuses on driving. UPS has segmented instruction down to specialists focusing on rear mirror positioning.

Attention to little details has helped UPS achieve a stellar driving record. Fleet drivers average less than one accident per million miles. That's led more than 100 companies and law enforcement agencies to seek out UPS for safety expertise.

Despite their early gaffes, the trainees will likely survive the October cut. Metropolitan Washington has a higher shipping volume rate — and turnover rate among workers — than most other districts. Moreover, UPS will soon enter its peak season. U.S. operations chief Cal Darden notes that between Thanksgiving and year's end, more than 50,000 temporary workers, including sorters, loaders, driver's helpers and drivers, will be needed nationwide to handle increased volume, which typically surges nearly 50%.

Lerch appears ripe for the challenge. He's already memorized the answers for the 60-part written exam to be given at the course's end and spends 90 minutes a night practicing on the DIAD.